Hydro Connect Festival was my first proper music festival, and quite possibly one of the furthest away from home we could get. After a 9 hour drive leaving home at 5am on Friday morning, we arrived at one of the most beautiful festival settings I think you’ll find this side of Coachella.

After the horrible trek from car park to campsite (we were warned it was 20 minutes, but we’d suggest you double that if you’re carrying a tent), we set up our tent and went out to explore the main arena.

First up were Noah and the Whale and Ladytron on the Guitars and Other Machines Stage (otherwise known as the second stage for those of you who are Glastonbury / Reading / Leeds fans), before a wander around to see Amy MacDonald sporting a rather fetching kilt. I’ve never been a huge fan of her Radio 2 - lite tunes, but the Scottish crowd certainly loved the Glaswegian girl.

Manic Street Preachers were up next, and were on absolute fire as they did an amazing set. I’d heard people rave about them, but now I really can understand why - they were amazing. Kasabian headlined, but frankly were nothing on the Manics. Tom Meighan is an amazing frontman and certainly can whip everyone up some, but frankly they don’t have the tunes that the Manics do.

After an interesting night in the campsite, we slowly started our Saturday in the Speakeasy cafe on the sofas, listening to some amazing acoustic music. Quickly time rolled around and we had to amble back to the Media tent to catch a quick chat with Paul from Glasvegas and Kele and Matt from Bloc Party. After coming down from that little bit of excitement, we went to catch Friendly Fires on the Guitars and Other Machines Stage. We knew they were good having stumbled across them several times around the blogosphere, but weren’t expecting the amazingly high-energy set they provided us with. Black Lips disappointed, failing to energise the rather small crowd. Glasvegas had one of the biggest mid-afternoon crowds of the weekend, and provided the anthem of the weekend around the campsites.

A bit of food, and back to the main Oyster stage for the evening. We had high hopes for Grinderman, but simply didn’t appreciate Nick Cave’s new project, with it sounding largely inaccessible to us. Paolo Nutini I wasn’t holding out high hopes for, but he plain and simply blew me away, with his songs providing some great sing alongs. Oh, and his cover of Will Smith’s Fresh Prince of Bel-Air? AMAZING.

We’d been excited about Bloc Party since their confirmation as Saturday night headliners, and with the announcement of their new album, Intimacy, just 10 days before the festival we were all the more excited. Kele and co didn’t disappoint, blasting through everything we’d hoped for and a bit more.

Somehow getting almost 6 hours sleep on Saturday night, we were woken by the pouring rain on Sunday morning, and took the decision to put our tent back in the car to prevent it from floating away in the increasingly boggy waters around our tent. Making the way back to the main arena we couldn’t decide who to catch, so caught snippets of a few different bands. Santagold looked rather out of place in a metallic blue dance suit compared to the muddy audience, but none the less was amazingly good, with her indenti-kit backing singers coupled with her backing band providing some surprisingly good tunes.

I’d heard about the Levellers from friends, but never actually caught them live. They were a true festival band, getting everyone moving, and really warming things up a bit. Elbow I’ve never been a huge fan of, however they again surprised me. Lead singer Guy Garvey was decidedly chatty, commenting that “this is my sort of weather - I don’t like the hot weather ‘cos people take off their clothes and it isn’t pretty from here! In Manchester just about every beer garden looks like it has about 2 dozen red eggs in it anytime there’s a mildly warm day!”

Goldfrapp were so-so. I’ve never been a huge fan of their stuff, on the basis lots of it is a bit too arty-farty for my liking. Plus, I was simply excited for Sigur Ros, who were next up and closing Hydro Connect 2008 for us. They didn’t disappoint.

With that, we left leaving Franz Ferdinand to do probably much what they did last time I caught them, and to make an exit from the car park (with the help of some amazingly nice girls who pushed us out of the mud).

What was hot:

• Amazing setting
• Great food at good prices
• The lineup… simply amazing for a festival so young and small
• The speakeasy tent with its comfy sofas and free newspapers
• Friendly and helpful security

What was not:

• Mobile reception was always hampered by “network busy” responses… if Hyde Park can cope with having upwards of 40,000 people all with mobiles, why can’t Connect? This was also the reason for a big lack of live updates from Connect - we didn’t take a laptop, and had been planning on there not
• The hideously long trek to and from the carpark
• A massive lack of toilets and washing facilities on the campsites.

Overheard:

“I now know where they let the oldies out to: we were by far the youngest in that tent!” (joked two mid-20 somethings on the walk back to the campsite)
“When you fail to perform, it really knocks your confidence… then you just can’t perform next time!” (overheard one morning at the campsite… you can only guess what it’s regarding!)
“This is SO overrated!” said by a guy completely covered in mud after wrestling his mate

Want more coverage?
Why not check out these Flickr Streams:
jjbuchan’s flickr stream
Taburetka’s flickr stream
Foofango’s flickr stream
Aaron Bassett’s flickr stream

… or these other reviews:
NME.com’s review
Sunday Herald’s review
The Lancashire Herald
The Independent
The Times

Thanks go to:
Lee and all at Burt Greener Communications for looking after us so well and sorting out the tickets.
Dan for the photos and putting up with me for a weekend.

Roll on Hydro Connect 2009 is all we can say!

So, I’m trying a new thing this week: A “daily roundup” of everything that doesn’t merit a complete post of its own. It won’t be literally every day (I do go out sometimes you know), but will be a collection of new MP3s, Videos, music etc.

It’s scary how quickly this Reading and Leeds festivals have been and (almost) gone. I’ve not really caught much coverage on the BBC of the festivals, but have checked out some of the ace videos and pictures. Particuarly loving the fact that Red Light Company are getting so much coverage from Zane Lowe, following on from my live review and initial introduction. Bloc Party look to have been amazing too - check out their live set available here for 7 days.

MP3: Red Light Company - Fascination
MP3: Red Light Company - Scheme Eugene
MP3: Red Light Company - With Lights Out

This time next week I’ll be in Scotland at Hydro Connect Festival, getting mouth wettingly-excited for the closing nights combination of Sigur Ros and Franz Ferdinand. I’ve spent much of today sorting out some pretty mundane things about the festival, like driving and what sort of coverage we’ll be having. I’ve had a look at the brilliant Winston’s Zen, who was at last weekend’s V Festival and getting a few ideas about how to live-blog the festival, amount of coverage etc. It’s gonna be hard to judge just what’s best until we get there, so don’t be suprised if you get tonnes, or next to nothing coverage wise.

One thing we’ve been having to look at is how to camp - I originally requested camping tickets, but got non-camping tickets, so have been looking at other options for us, from Tangerine Fields‘ bespoke camping options, to the goregous wendy-house style Podpads via the eco-friendly myhab’s - I’d honestly never really considered anything other than a tent, or a hotel for the posho’s.

Traditionally, August is quite a quiet time for the music industry - bands are off playing the festivals, people are on holidays, and generally the live music biz is taking a well-earned break ahead of the onslught of year-end tours. However, this week we’ve had no end of new tour announcements, with The Fratellis, Kaiser Chiefs, The Whip, Laura Marling, Joan as a Policewoman, Slipknot and Martha Wainwright all announcing stints around the UK this winter. I’m not expecting this week to have quite as many new tour announcements, but fingers crossed - this winter’s shaping up to be a great live experience.

“We’re only two songs in and already Paul’s broken the drums!” smirks Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos as drummer Paul Thomson attempts to re-assemble his broken kit. This turned out to be a recurring theme of the evening, as later on Nick’s guitar amp and strings gave up the ghost. However, regardless of all of that it was nice to see a stadium-filling band play a tiny boat in Bristol’s harbour and deal with the problems of playing a tiny stage and going back to their roots.

Kicking off the evening was Chilean five piece Panico. At first I was sceptical - South American party band supporting British indie kings? Really? But somehow, it worked. Starting off carefully, they quickly began to woo the crowd with their CSS / Gogol Bordello / Ladytron / The Music mixture of sounds, and energy laden front-man in the shape of the (ingeniously named) Memo.

Initially I was going to compare them solely to CSS, the Brazilian party stars of 2007, but realised pretty soon that that would be doing Panico an injustice. They’re much more talented, and their songs have more depth, and a sense of urgency that would put others to the test. The gorgeous Carolina held it all together more than capably on bass, providing some calm next to Memo’s crazy shapes. Whilst Carolina held it together, each member clearly is quite talented, and collectively they’re definitely ones to watch in coming months and years.

Lyrically they switch between Spanish and English, which certainly makes for interesting listening, and a more exotic feel than a typical British evening in inner city Bristol. By the end of the set they had everyone bouncing, and were the perfect warm up for Franz Ferdinand - everyone was ready to party.

9:45 rolled around and Franz marched on stage, self assuredly and immediately plunged into a new song, “New Thrill”, which went down a storm, and got them off to a good start, before peppering the rest of their set with newer tracks.

“Tonight, we’re going to play you some new songs, some old songs, and…” “some songs!” yelled a heckler as Alex was introducing themselves, to much laughter around the venue, and smirks from the band. “Yes, yes, we’ll play you some songs, if you want, they’ll be good ones!” smiled Alex, clearly in his element and enjoying the intimate surroundings of the Thekla.

Many of the older tracks sound just as good now as they did when they first arrived on our airwaves back in 2004. Take Me Out has renewed vigour, and surprisingly didn’t have the crowd bouncing the most. That award went to the set closer, This Fire, which saw the Thekla start to sway quite scarily as the boat rocked in the water with 350 people bouncing to the encore closer.

Keeping the set short left us all wanting more from the headliners, though Panico surprised me and could be ones to watch for the future.

After the jump: setlist and pics

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I promised myself I wouldn’t mention the festivals this summer, with the vast majority of them having shockingly awful lineups (yes, Reading / Leeds / Wireless / Glastonbury, I’m looking at you). However one festival has consistently attracted my attention: Connect.

I’ve already mentioned it before, but the new bands they’ve added to the lineup this week means I have to mention it again: it’s like my dream festival lineup.

Not only do they already have Kasabian, Manic Street Preachers, Franz Ferdinand, Sigur Ros, Bloc Party, Gossip and friends, they now have the amazing Ladytron, Guillemots and NME favourites Glasvegas. Quite honestly, I’d give anything to see this lineup, as it looks pretty darned good compared to the rest of the festivals. All they need to do is add Delays and The National, and I’ll be up there in a flash.

If I were you, come payday I’d get a weekend ticket, which are priced £120 and weekend tickets with camping are £140. To buy, log onto their website or call Ticketmaster on 08444 999 990

Glagow’s finest Franz Ferdinand are off on a quick stint around Scottish towns in September as part of their comittment to “keep it real” in Scotland and stay close to their roots. Tickets go on sale at 9am on Saturday morning from their official website, with a strict limit of 4 per person per date except for the Shetland date which has a limit of two per person.

Sunday 9th September - Stirling Fubar
Monday 10th September - Inverness Raigmore
Tuesday 11th September - Fort William Ba Club
Tuesday 18th September - Dundee Fat Sams
Wednesday 19th September - Aberdeen Moshulu
Friday 21st September - Portree Community Centre
Monday 24th September - Shetland Whiteness & Weisdale Hall

Photo taken from damclean’s flickr stream.